


Hyacinths, Lilacs, and Poppies

by galacticabyss



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Bad Parent Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Character Turned Into a Ghost, Coping, Gen, Hair Braiding, Hopeful Ending, Language of Flowers, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Pandora's Vault, Parent Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Piglin Hybrid Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Piglin Hybrid Wilbur Soot, Twins Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29319405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticabyss/pseuds/galacticabyss
Summary: Everyone ends up in Pandora's Vault, kept seperated apart with the only human contact being their warden, Dream. Of course, blackstone and obsidian never did well at keeping ghosts away from their loved ones.---This au is entirely inspired by Dollhouse by Lacy_Star, if you want more context for what's going on and a few things mentioned, please go read it. It's a wonderful story and I love it so much I read it on a weekly basis.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 216





	Hyacinths, Lilacs, and Poppies

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dollhouse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28589229) by [Lacy_Star](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacy_Star/pseuds/Lacy_Star). 



Ghostbur was pretty sure that Dream was lying to him. Which was stupid! Why would he actually lie to him? That would be mean, and Dream is his friend, and friends don't lie or be mean to each other!

But things just weren't adding up.

Dream said that this was just a new home, that everyone was going to move in and everyone was going to be happy! But he wasn't stupid. He was an amnesiac and he couldn't keep all of his memories together without shattering apart, but he wasn't stupid. Or deaf, he could hear the ways that the others yowled across the place to try to communicate. It didn't sound like just a new home, especially considering how loud he could hear Niki scream when she was dragged out.

That memory hadn't left him, that was one that stayed right next to the ones with his family and he wasn't sure why but he made sure he couldn't forget it.

Dream wouldn't like it if he left the cell, and he wouldn't exactly be a good friend if he went so blatantly against his wishes. But he wouldn't exactly be a good friend to the others if he stayed.

Ghostbur frowned at his reflection in the metal of his desk, reasoning back and forth with himself. Surely Dream wouldn't be that mad, and it wasn't like Ghostbur was planning on just telling him the next time he saw the man. If no one told him, and Dream never found out, then it would be just like he hadn't disobeyed in the first place!

There certainly was a lot of alarms and defense for something that was just supposed to be a home, but he didn't think that any of it actually would detect him. Ghostbur sat on the floor of his room (cell, a voice that sounded far too manic and cackling to be his own screamed out) and slowly let the world fall by the wayside. 

It was a trick he was getting better and better at, letting his entire body go immaterial and slip through physical boundaries. The alarms never detected it, even when he got a little too close to the bars (why were there bars on a home). His legs went through the floor, leaving only his torso in his actual room.

There wasn't a reason behind it, but he let his legs fall down, hanging into the room below as he dropped down. Enough to mimic like he was cushioning an imaginary landing as he hit the floor of the room below.

"Wil?" His twin brother's voice was soft, like he hadn't used it in a while, and as he reached out Ghostbur found himself leaning into the touch that he couldn't quite feel, "Aw- fuck I thought I was done with the hallucinations."

Ghostbur didn't let himself dwell on the idea that his brother had been in such a state that hallucinations had been common, instead just emphatically shaking his head, "You are! Or Were, or whatever! I'm here! I'm real!" It had been a while (he couldn't remember the exact time, it all slipped through his fingers) since he had seen a face that wasn't Dream's mask.

Technoblade was still just as much of a warrior as the last time he had seen him, but there was something wrong about it. Maybe it was the fact that his hair hung undone around his shoulders, messy and barely thrown over his shoulders. Or maybe it was the fact that he was no longer wearing the boar skull mask that he had started wearing when they were sixteen and never truly took off. Maybe it was the way that there were scratches gouged into the obsidian walls of the room like Techno had attempted to claw his way out.

Ghostbur shook his head, it was the hair. It had to just be the hair. The hair he could fix! It was hard for him to properly touch and interact with the world, but he could try for his twin! He could braid his hair and make everything better, make his brother into the warrior that he was the last time he saw him (when was the last time that he saw his brother, it couldn't have been that long!).

"How are you-" Techno cut himself off, glancing briefly at the door to the room, and just gestured. Ghostbur wasn't sure why his brother wasn't talking with his words, but that was fine. It wouldn't be the first time that Techno didn't talk and Wilbur had to interpret all of the other's signs. 

"I don't know! I know that I am in the room-" He dismissed the sight of his brother's face briefly twisting into a scowl, it wasn't important even as alarms blared in the back of his mind screaming at him to pay attention- "above yours, and I realized that it's been way too long since I've seen someone who wasn't Dream!" Again, he ignored the sirens in his mind as his twin's face flicked to rage.

"Yeah," Techno's monotone was a little hard to parse this time around, but the subtle noise of him grinding his teeth was enough for Wilbur to get the gist of his feelings.

Or at least, briefly grasp onto his feelings before they ripped their way out of his fingertips, "Tech, you shouldn't grind your teeth like that, you're going to give yourself a migraine," Ghostbur clucked his tongue, letting himself float up just enough so that he was just the barest bit taller than his twin. He ran his fingers through Techno's hair, frowning slightly as his fingers hit resistance.

Techno never let his hair get this knotty, or maybe he did. Ghostbur knew that he couldn't trust his own memories, he knew that very well! After all, Dream often had to remind him about the way things went (he's glad that he's above his twin and not his father), and he knew that he was missing pieces. But he remembered how to care for his brother's hair, he knew that much.

Sometimes knowledge was just innate. You knew that things had to happen at a time, and at a place. Wilbur knows how to braid hair and how to keep it clean and pretty and just how to scratch the sides of his nails against his twin brother's scalp to get him to relax. "Can I braid your hair?"

Ghostbur wasn't stupid, he knew he had parts missing and that sometimes people looked at him with just enough sympathy that it soured into pity. He knew that he was childish and focused on all of the wrong parts of everything, but he couldn't change it. He could, however, hold his brother's hands in his ghostly ones like they were both children and keep that vacant smile on his face before his mind shattered further into static.

"Please?" he asked, just like he used to. His mind was a picture book of tattered memories with holes burned into the centers, but he knew how to mimic the fragments that remained. Ghostbur knew that he used the same tone over and over again whenever he wanted something that people didn't want to give him (he remembers using the same tone when he asked Phil to kill him). 

Techno was never the best at refusing his brother, and the streak continued as he let out a soft groan. Ghostbur let out a soft whoop as he watched Techno move to sit on the edge of the cot and began to sort out the mess that had overtaken his hair. He grimaced a little as his fingers ran over the large mat in the back, "You're not going to yank all of my hair out of my head, right?"

Wilbur huffed, rolling his eyes as his fingers moved to start separating the strands of hair that he could, "When have I ever done such a thing?" He holds onto the playfulness of anger, keeping it from fizzling out into static. He can't reset, not when he has a task to do.

"You're jealous of my hair, obviously," Techno's deadpan was enough to have Wilbur muffle his cackle. He wasn't sure exactly why he knew that he shouldn't let his laughter be heard, shouldn't let any noise escape his phantom lips that could be heard by anyone other than his twin, but he knew it as well as he knew the Piglin in front of him.

Thoughts of his own hair tended to end in static, especially when he noticed how the pink was just barely poking through at the roots and it would never ever reach any higher and the worn down canines would never grow to poke out of his lips again. It was going to end in nothing but static and shattering apart which wouldn't be good. 

He had to take care of his brother's hair and he needed to have the tightest grip on the lid of his memories so nothing escaped because things would've just devolved from there. Ghostbur didn't want to reset and find himself in a worst position. Tomorrow never had any security surrounding it, he was smart enough to know that, so if this happened to be the last night that he had, then he would spend it with Techno.

Dream was a little off today, head tilted a little too far to the left to be completely sincere. Wilbur wasn't sure what was coming, but he knew that something was. Hard reset, that's usually what he referred to it as. 

Dream would come in, and there would be no pretenses. No ability to hide and laugh and lie that he didn't remember anything, that he knew that this was just a home. And well- Wilbur wasn't exactly sure of what happened, but he knew that he would lose the scraped together bits of his memory until he found them again.

Like Dream was just a tidal wave, crashing into Wilbur's sandcastle of memories and emotions and dragged it all out of his grasp and left him in a sorry state. He always believed Dream in whatever he said for a few weeks after that, unable to even think that someone was lying to him. But Techno (it was always Techno, even far before they were in the prison, it had always been Techno) was the one to draw him out of it.

No matter how many times Dream forced him to hard reset, Techno always found time to explain things. Explain that  _ No Wil, this isn't a home, it's a prison and we're stuck here _ and  _ no Wil, Dream isn't a good person and he doesn't have your best interests at heart, don't trust him _ and  _ Wil, you remember me right? I'm your twin brother _ . 

That had been a particularly hard reset for everyone involved. Wilbur was left with even less than he originally had, he couldn't remember anything. Not his name, not that he had siblings, not that his father had wings, not that he had a father.

Techno had brought him out of that, and Wilbur would probably always be in debt to him for that. Well, he would be if it wasn't for the fact that they were twins. Debt was never something that really came up, things were freely given often (maybe a little too often, Techno had been betrayed too many times and Wilbur still couldn't stop it). And it was okay, after all they were always going to be brothers (through dimensions and worlds and death, they would be twins still).

"Are you going to braid my hair, or are you too zoned out for that?" Techno's tone hovered in between fond exasperation and worry, and Ghostbur just gave a little laugh.

He wasn't really Ghostbur, he knew that he wasn't really Wilbur (and definitely not Alivebur no matter how much everyone else wanted him to be), but he wasn't naive. Not at times like these, when everyone else was asleep and it was just him and his brother. Memories didn't come easy, but they came, and the burned holes tended to repair themselves if Techno was talking him through the memory.

His brother knew this, and so it was never mentioned.

"Well excuse me, Mr. Blade, but you just have so much hair that I'm trying to separate it from itself!" A lilting laugh, not quite his old laugh but it was close enough for the night. "I'm thinking of giving you a braid crown, just like I used to." His voice dropped, quieter than ever as he tried to shift through the faded photographs that made up his memories, "Do you remember? That day in the field at the old house?"

Techno didn't reply for a beat, a brief hum as he thought on it, "The one with all the flowers in it?"

"Yes!" He sighed, relieved that it was an actual memory and not just something that he had made up after reading it in a book. "I don't- they won't be real flowers of course-" Flowers were too alive for him to create, but he could make simulacrum out of the blue that he carried around with him- "But I could give you the same sort of crown."

Again, his twin brother was silent. Though this time he was almost completely still, only the vague flick of his tail was enough to let Wilbur know that he was actually thinking on it.

"I think...I'd like that a lot."

Creating fake flowers came easy to Wilbur, considering that he had a good deal of farming and plant books in the library that Dream had given him (and if the sections dedicated to potatoes were creased and dog-eared and highlighted for a possible future of them ever getting out of the prison). He knew the chemistry of it, what they looked like from all angles, and that made it easier. 

But that was a step saved for last, a step saved for once the actual braid was already mostly done. Sure, it also meant that most of the effort that he just put in for separating out Techno's hair was now useless because he had to take up strands in the front in order to make the actual crown. A little extra effort was nothing, not when it came to his twin.

Even though it had been years since he had last had the chance to properly make a braid crown for him, Techno was the perfect model for it. Sitting straight up, his head just barely inclined backwards so that Wilbur could get the best vantage point for it. Several memories ran through his mind, guiding his hands in deft and careful strokes without tugging on the hair.

They were five when they first started to do each other's hair. Phil had only adopted them a year prior, and Techno had started to grow his hair out. Back then, Wilbur had wanted to do nothing more than follow in his brother's footsteps and so he also grew his hair out. The voices hadn't started for Techno, and Phil was more than happy to stay at home for the two of them (what had changed), and so they would stay in the field by the house and practice. 

Braids, ponytails, daisy chains, whatever they could twist in their fingers they did. Of course, more often than not it usually ended with their hair being matted and full of knots that Phil would have to comb out later that night, but it never stopped them. Wilbur had been the best at making daisy chains, at making flower crowns that wouldn't fall off or fall apart when they ran through the fields, but Techno always had talent for doing his own hair.

Wilbur could see a faint reflection of himself in the cracked mirror that was hung on the wall, and he fought against the urge to run his fingers through his short hair. The pink roots were barely noticeable due to his entire body being greyscale, and he wondered if his twin mourned their identical nature just as much as he did. 

Techno was reflected in the mirror as well, and another piece of the wrongness settled into place. Dream had taken his crown, the one that he had fought tooth and nail and blade and blood for once, and then a thousand times over in order to keep it. Techno never took it off, just like his boar skull mask, and it was a point of pride.

Wilbur's hand shimmered, like he was seeing them through the water of a stream, and he forced himself back together. There would be time for rage later, there would always be time for rage later. But right now, his brother's hair was only a fourth of the way through the braid and Wilbur needed to focus on him.

"You still haven't lost your talent," Techno chuckled, just a bit, and Wilbur realized that a lock of his hair was loose. Too short to be incorporated for the larger braid, but the crown was too far done to tuck it back in.

"I guess you can just cut it off," Wilbur suggested, giving a little harder of a yank on the braid to tighten it, "Unless you want to redo it on your own once I'm done?" Even as his voice ended on a questioning note, he knew that his brother wouldn't. Even when his fingers were still clumsy and untrained, Techno would always let the braid unravel on its own rather than take it out.

Predictably, Techno just huffed and shook his head. 

They settled into silence after that, comfortable and easy with only the vague noises of hair being tugged and braided breaking the silence. If Wilbur let himself drift, just focusing down on the repetitive actions of braiding, then he could trick himself into thinking that it was any other day before Techno became the Blood God and Philza stopped being his father. 

He didn't have a lot that he could use to tie off the braid, but he figured that a few strips missing from his sweater wouldn't be a big deal. Techno's hair was set into two braids, one wrapping around his head like a proper crown and the other tying all the rest of the hair down his back. 

It wasn't finished, he promised Techno flowers and he would give them no matter how fake they were. Maybe one day they could be real again.

One of the books in his library (that Dream was oh so kind to give him) was on flowers and their meanings. Meanings that would probably be lost on anyone but Techno, but Wilbur remembered watching his twin absolutely pour over the same exact book when they were five.

Hyacinths and lilac and poppy, forgiveness and remembrance and hope.

Forgiveness for what they had both done to each other, it was useless to hold grudges. Why hold a grudge when one of you is dead and the other doesn't quite regret their decisions. They were both trapped, stacked in cells on top of each other, and Wilbur didn't have time to be angry about rockets and fireworks and withers. He was sure (at least he hoped) that Techno felt the same way with bombs and laughter and far too cruel words between brothers.

Remembrance, a sign. Even if Wilbur forgot, even if he allowed Dream to dig his fingers into his mind and warp his perceptions of everything until he was back at square one, Techno could remember for the both of them. And one day, they could both remember.

Hope, for the future. Wilbur wasn't stupid, he knew that this was a prison and that getting out was nearly a hopeless endeavor. But nearly didn't mean completely, and if he could make a flower crown out of poppies after braiding his brother's hair for the first time in a decade? 

Maybe the day where they can go to a real field with real flowers and Wilbur's hair would be long and pink was still achievable.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Written by Abyss! Thanks to those in the Lavender Tea discord for actually making me publish this!


End file.
